I got an opportunity to have an early listen (actually you can too, at this location) to Imagika’s next album, Portrait of a Hanged Man. The album comes out next month and marks what appears to be the band’s 7th album since the band’s formation in 1995 (followed by the x-rated version, Portrait of a “Hung” Man, nyuck, nyuck). You have to admire any band that makes it to 7 albums, shoot I guess most bands are lucky to make it to 2.

Now, I’m probably not as familiar with Imagika as some of you early Bay Area Metal vets, but I’ve heard a number of Imagika tunes over the past couple of years and, on the whole, I like their progressive and thrashy power metal style. They seem to always have a good mix going on and their vocalist, Norman Skinner, has a pretty remarkable range – varying in degree from Chuck Billy low to Bruce Dickenson high to Warrell Dane creepy. There are times, however, when I wish that the band brought it a little more, and just gave us a little bit more of the heavier side of things. They definitely moved in that direction with Portrait, incorporating some more low vocals, down-tuning and even some blast-beats.

Imagika have really improved their song writing with this album. The guitar playing is more polished and the vocals are more in sync with what is happening in the song overall. The drums sound killer, as usual. Although, I wouldn’t mind having a few more “hooks” that I could sing along with, but I suck at singing anyways so maybe it’s not that important. My favorite tracks at the moment are probably Simple Servant and Halo of Flies.

At a length of 11 tracks, Portrait of a Hanged Man is a good solid metal album. There have already been releases by other Bay Area heavy weights like Heathen, Future’s End and High on Fire this year, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out for Imagika. They’ve been around this long though, so I wouldn’t expect them to be going away anytime soon.

Overall score – 88 / 100